For any country to develop it is necessary to have private individuals who come up with innovative ways of doing things. Britain had the likes of Jethro Tull, who invented a seed drilling machine, George Stephenson who gave us the railway system, Michael Farad who experimented with electronic circuits, among many others.
I once was privileged to visit an old textiles mill at Styall in the midlands of England. This mill had been constructed by a private individual at the beginning of the industrial revolution. It stood over a river whose running water moved a turbine, which in turn operated several spins and weavers.
A number of similar mills had been set up by private citizens in Britain in the early nineteenth century, propelling Britain to the position of a world leader in manufacturing. I have stated a number of times before that as I grew up almost everything that was made was made in England. The role of the British Government during the industrial revolution was to facilitate smooth trade between its people and those countries that grew cotton, among others. Britain’s weather does not favour the growing of cotton and therefore, all the cotton that enabled the industrial evolution to roll out was imported.
One of such mills existed at Blantyre near Glasgow. This is where David Livingstone’s father worked. It is now a museum, as is the one at Styall.
Any country needs players like the ones I have described above in order to develop. Japan, like any other country that can be described as developed, has had a number of these players! They brought much development to that country. They included people like Kiichiro Toyoda, the founder of Toyota Motor Corporation and Masujiro Hashimoto et al, founders of what is called Nissan Motor Corporation today.
In Malawi we have come to believe that it is the sole responsibility of Government to develop the country. As a result everyone else becomes a spectator, nay a critique. We outdo each other bashing those in Government but doing next to nothing to develop people like Kiichiro Toyoda. When you listen to what people say on social media, you get the impression that all the evil people are in Government and all the saints are outside Government.
Granted, Government needs to be taken to task so that the scarce resources at their disposal are used as prudently as possible. The evils which manifest themselves in the form of corruption, impunity, cronyism, nepotism and other negative isms should not be allowed to take root by all means. They are cancerous and ultimately fatal, and should, therefore, be dealt the death blow at the earliest opportunity.
What worries me is that thousands come out to act the umpire who is able to fault Government at every turn while doing nothing themselves to contribute to the development of this country. It is not the umpires that win a game; rather it is the players that do. We should make it our preoccupation to populate Malawi with more players than umpires to reverse the current trend, which is leading us nowhere.
The mistaken belief that taxpayers’ money will develop this country needs to be challenged. There is no denying that the money realised from tax can make of many our systems work, in terms of public services, if it was properly handled. However, there is a general tendency to overrate Malawi’s tax payers’ money. In the 2022/23 financial year, MRA is expected to collect K1.528 trillion. This figure pales into insignificance when it is compare to the net worth of just one man, Elon Musk, which is at a staggering K171 trilllion. We need a lot more than tax payer’s money to develop this country.
In May of 1888, a black American called Matthew Cherry received a patent for his invention, the tricycle. Today, thanks to Cherry’s innovation, a tricycle is a much loved type of vehicle for carrying people or goods. There have been many people getting patents for their innovations, some white, some black and others of intermediary colours. These are the people that have helped their countries develop. The patent office in Malawi must be a very idle one because we hardly invent things here. We are excellent at faulting others but we hardly do anything worth patenting ourselves.
This needs to change. We need to conduct a hard search within ourselves and identify what we can do as private citizens to turn ourselves into useful economic players whose efforts will contribute to the advancement of the Malawian society. Having so many umpires and so few players is not a desirable state of affairs